By IANS
Mumbai : Jet Airways, which scrapped a plan to launch a flight to South Africa last month, plans to reschedule and launch flights to that country in the first quarter of 2009.
“We are planning Mumbai-Johannesburg flights at least by next summer,” Jet CEO Wolfgang Prock-Schauer told IANS here.
In March, Jet had postponed its much-anticipated plan to start services on the Mumbai-Johannesburg sector from April 2008 in favour of more lucrative destinations.
“Instead of South Africa, we decided to first fly to more profitable sectors like the US and China,” he said.
South Africa Airways is the sole carrier which flies to India after India’s national carrier Air India pulled out of that country some years ago, citing poor business and lack of profitability.
“At this moment we cannot afford to lose money. We have to consider the bottom line by looking at routes that are more profitable and can deliver better yields,” Prock-Schauer said.
However, he feels that the route could be lucrative as there has been rapid growth in leisure traffic between India and South Africa and there are a lot of Indian immigrants settled there.